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Not impressed with Firstbeat's implementation

NYanakiev7
over 5 years ago

This is about Body Battery. Sometimes I feel like it's an accurate representation of my energy levels and general state at the end of a day but there are times like today when it makes no sense.

26km worth of cycling (Garmin HRM-Run belt in use during the rides) and a 5k run with with the heart rate belt, my body battery is at 49?!!

So far I've made 18k steps and burned 1960 calories. I also accumulated more than 300 intensity minutes. 

Can anyone make sense of this?...

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    I find it ok, it also depends on how intense were your workouts. In 2 hours I will have the first trail marathon with Marq, let's see what battery I have left after it ...

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    What is the issue? That's not too intensive, is it?

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to aleksiz

    It was rather intensive. Another example: 19k hike with 500m of climbing resulted in a loss of - 33 body battery.

    Makes no sense at all. 36k steps, 1325 calories 

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to NYanakiev7

    What is your general fitness level?

    5k in30 mins avg 140ish HR; might be intense or (probably) not, 26k bike rides split up into multiples,  at below 15km/h average speed and below 120 bpm HR is certainly not something that should require much energy unless you are very unfit (not likely as you hiked 19k)

    i agree, body battery needs some contextual work (i.e. is 33 points loss for a single activity a big effort or low effort, etc)

    but from your given examples it seems like it works fine, a bit of biking around leisurely followed by a short LSD run; think about what you would say if that showed the battery as fully drained

    what would you expect it to say after these kind of workouts?

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to NYanakiev7

    Just as an aside, steps, calories, and intensity minutes are not really useful in gauging effort... step count is missing crucial information such as total activity time and actual intensity; intensity minutes are an aggregation of time over a full week rather than individual days or activities; and calories... well despite what apple wants to make people believe calories don’t give any kind of meaningful measure other than “I was active”

    all 3 of of those (steps, intensity minutes, calories, and also floor count) really are just proxies for “did I sit around doing nothing or did I move around somewhat”, nothing more, certainly not any kind of training load metrics

    Intensity and effort in garmin/firstbeat world is heavily influenced by % of Vo2Max aggregated over time (and certainly much more complicated than that) rather than simple onedimensional metrics like steps or calories

    what did you feel like at the end of these days, and how did it correlate with what the firstbeat stats said? How recovered/energized did you feel the day after, and how does it correlate to the body battery/stress levels shown?

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    So, yesterday Marathon trail race. Started the activity with battery level at 60 (woke up early, stress, driving to the race etc).  After 6 hours or race left with 12. It was 17:00. By the end of the day I had 6. Woke up expecting some recovery, I only have 12 after 7 hours of sleep. Check strees over night it was very high than usual. So to me the system makes sense. I feel like I need those 3 days of recovery the watch is showing me...

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to claude512

    Pretty good- being able to run half marathons sub 2:00;

    I am not arguing that any of the activities should be classified as "high effort"- what I am arguing is that I find that my overall energy levels at the end of a Friday (when I cycled to and from work and cycled in central London avoiding stopped cars like in a film chase) and ran home and back out to take part in a run in the heat do not correspond at all to the body battery indicator. 

    In other words, Firstbeat is failing to take various factors into account like:

    -It was Friday- end of the week etc when stress would reach a high point, having accumulated throughout the week

    -It was generally quite hot 

    The 5k run was slow paced but everyone was sweating like crazy+exercise stops (that werent recorded) were done every 2k 

    I was feeling knackered at the end of it all, while Body Battery was at 49; I did 300 intensity minutes on Friday alone!!! Steps/floors climbed are very much an activity indicator, can't agree with you here.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to claude512

    Again, nope, you can easily see an intensity minutes breakdown by day. 300 in a day is a pretty clear indicator of effort. I was feeling very tired at the end of it all due to all factors already mentioned and BB at 49 was a complete joke.

    I think that BB is severely biased towards single continuous activities like races and, as such, means that there is very little value in wearing a device 24/7 in the hope of seeing BB give you an actual indication of how ready you are for a sports event/the next day etc. 

    This feels like a lost opportunity to me